I'll be honest, I don't remember seeing anything about this in the faq. That being said, it's been a long time since I looked into it and I most likely wasn't attentive enough.
I didn't even know the site separated paid and free games.
I'm ashamed to admit that I'm gonna have to look into all that more closely... 5 years after creating my account...
I am only on Itch for about two years, I could not tell how it was back then. They changed some things. I read that they once had press accounts to give away test games and removed it at some point - but did not remove the buttons for it. Stuff like that. Maybe priced files once was recommended for pay what you want games. Nice to see a game come to release. Many games I saw are abandoned.